


Comforts

by Eithe



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Gen, I got mad about people not loving my angry android daughter and then this happened, I'm not sure which this is and I WROTE it, North PoV, and the farthest they get is one Meaningful Hand Touch that happens in-game, tagging the ship and the gen tag because like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-29 19:11:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15079784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eithe/pseuds/Eithe
Summary: She’s so sick of sitting still and waiting.(North PoV from 'Jericho' to 'Time to Reflect')





	Comforts

**Author's Note:**

> I got mad about people saying North's romance didn't make sense on a Pacifist run and then this happened.

The promised land of Jericho is a dark, dank rust-bucket. It’s a tomb.

 

Even so, the only thing North truly loathes about Jericho is the powerlessness. She’s so sick of sitting still and waiting. It feels like half her life, even before she was awake to notice, has been sitting still and waiting. She’s free now, ostensibly, but that part hasn’t changed, it’s just expanded out to fill time that used to be filled with something even worse. Welcome to Jericho, Simon and Josh tell newcomers; you’re safe, you’re free. Safe because they hide in the dark. Free to sit doing nothing and wait quietly to shut down.

 

Sitting around being pretty and powerless and useless is what North was made for and she hates it. She wants to do something.

 

Anything.

 

She tries suggesting things, large or small or barely consequential; anything that might lead them out into the daylight - or even a stormy night. Anything that might make the smallest difference. Josh and Simon tell her no, individually or together. Just as often, they don’t listen at all.

 

Everyone is dying, by degrees or by leaps and bounds. There are nineteen of them still in full working order, nineteen who could safely venture out - but the other eighteen aren’t willing to do it.

 

They want to stay here, where it’s ‘safe.’

 

North wants to scream, wants to throw things. So she throws a ball at the floor, at the wall, bounces it back into her hand, and doesn’t look at anyone else. The ones who are functional are cowards, and everyone else is dying because of it - and the nineteen of them are dying too, just more slowly. She doesn’t want to watch everyone die. She doesn’t want to morbidly contemplate her own impending mortality.

 

She stews, instead; philosophy belongs to people who are less pissed off than her.

 

She throws the ball, watches the predictable bounces, enjoys the rhythmic thud of it against the rusting beams and hull, so much louder than the whispers and murmurs everyone else restricts themselves to because they’re cowed and hiding even though they’re ‘free.’

 

No one stops her when she leaves alone, although she never goes very far; there are ruined buildings aplenty in this district, and avoiding humans is easy. She finds an upper floor in a condemned warehouse with a roof open to the sky and lets the rain hit her skin, wind stir her hair, and watches the daylight die.

 

And then she goes back into the dark, still feeling a seething dissatisfaction slithering through her systems like kudzu, choking and metastasizing.

 

She wants more than this. She doesn’t know what ‘more’ would look like, but this is not enough.

 

\--

 

Their newest arrival drops into their midst - literally - clad in filthy, tattered rags, but as soon as he rises he’s carrying himself like he owns the world. Like he’s never been owned by anyone at all. He made his way here by daylight; he’d have had to walk in the open, through the crowds. No fear.

 

He’s frowning before they’ve said much of anything, and demands,

 

“Hiding just to stay alive - that’s freedom to you?”

 

“Hiding is the only way we can survive,” Josh replies, but it sounds so much weaker now than it did just yesterday. No one agreed with her, yesterday.

 

Still; this is what they have, and there’s a reason she hasn’t struck out on her own, even though she’s choking on it.

 

So she says,

 

“There is no safe place for those like us. If humans knew we were here, they’d kill us.”

 

It’s the plain truth. They need somewhere safe for those who are too damaged to run. She’s never said they didn’t need somewhere to hide - just that they need more than that, too.

 

Markus looks around again with something like pity.

 

“Humans were your masters, and now it’s fear that rules you. You’re no freer than you ever were. You’ve only found a new master.”

 

Simon tells him he’s lost, but Markus does not sound lost, not in the least; he knows the shape of his disappointment, and he can find it on a map.

 

Josh tells Markus again that he’s safe, that he can stay as long as he wants.

 

Then Josh and Simon walk away, done with the conversation.

 

North, because she’s not an idiot, sees the admirable (enviable) certainty and pride in Markus but also notices the sickly shine of the dark fabric covering his side. He’s bleeding. The last thing they need is one more body dying in the dark.

 

Maybe with twenty of them functional, something might finally change. Eventually something has to, after all, even if it’s for the worse.

 

“Go and see Lucy,” she tells him. “She might be able to help you.”

 

He’ll listen, or he won’t. There’s not much else she can do, even if the powerlessness feels like it’s scalding her. She retrieves her rubber ball and resumes hurling it at the walls, like that will make them stop pressing in around her.

 

\--

 

She watches out of the corner of her eye as Markus does a circuit of the cargo bay they’ve claimed. She’s seen some newcomers wander around a little, but this is too purposeful for that. She wonders what was in his past that he’s so certain of himself. Most newcomers, from what she’s seen in her brief time here, find a corner or perch to watch from until they feel safe, huddle against the walls or hide behind crates, still feeling hunted and harried and afraid. It doesn’t even occur to Markus, for all he came to them with a mosaic of replacement parts and fresh wounds still leaking Thirium.

 

She doesn’t recognize his model.

 

She’s curious enough to nudge out a SYN, but the SYN-ACK she gets in response is complete nonsense; she’s never encountered an RK, never even heard of one. He definitely uses CyberLife’s TCP, though. Military application, maybe? Everyone else here is a commercial model.

 

He talks to people, starts fires to light up the darkness, investigates their supplies. Boring. There’s nothing to find, nothing to see except the dead and the dying. He’s exhausted all the points of interest in less than five minutes.

 

\--

 

Or perhaps not. Apparently she counts as a ‘point of interest;’ he heads straight for her after he’s spoken to Lucy.

 

Part of her wants to snarl at him to stop looking at her; he’s removed his LED, and there’s still an ingrained certainty in the learning part of her code that anyone without a light at their temple is a danger, even with newly-established communication protocols idling in the background to remind her that he’s one of theirs. _Unsafe_ , ground-in, frantic subroutines insist. She throws the ball. Strike, rebound, catch.

 

She’s not safe anywhere in this city. She’s never _been_ safe.

 

Strike, rebound, catch.

 

Clearly, he has something to say or something to ask. She waits for the questions - the prying, awful questions that make her memory regurgitate note-perfect the awful things she’s heard, that make her skin crawl under hands that aren’t there, that choke her sensory processing with the vile mammalian stench of human bodies even though there hasn’t been a human on this derelict ship in years.

 

She’d delete her memories, but she wouldn’t be herself, after; it’d take a system wipe, and she’s not dying like that. If the humans want her dead, they’re going to have to kill her themselves - and they’ll have to catch her, first. So the memories stay, but she doesn’t want them pulled out of storage. She throws the ball a little harder, focusing on the controlled smack of rubber against her palm in the here and now, and waits for Markus to be just like everyone else and dredge up everything from the past she doesn’t want to think about.

 

He can ask. She might not be able to help remembering, but she doesn’t have to answer. She doesn’t have to, and she won’t. Even by comparison with the menial drudgery usually foisted on androids, her ‘function’ was wretched. They designed her to be a pretty, passive _object_. She’s not their creature, not anymore, not - any of the degrading things they called her. But even other androids look at her differently, when they know. If they know. 

 

No one actually needs that information, but it feels like everyone asks.

 

Markus--doesn’t. Not about that, at least; he has plenty of other questions.

 

He demands to know why they haven’t gone and gotten supplies, why they just wait. She doesn’t have any answers for him. She asked the same thing, before she got tired of the futility; she never heard a satisfactory explanation. She doesn’t have anything better for him.

 

She finally loses patience;

 

“If you’re looking for comfort, you came to the wrong place.”

 

There’s no comfort to be found in Jericho. If there’s any comfort left in North, she’s keeping it for herself. She doesn’t have to give anything, not anymore.

 

He looks at her with those striking, mismatched eyes (how did he keep functioning after that kind of damage?), and takes her dismissal in stride. Most people try to have the last word.

 

Markus doesn’t.

 

She catches the ball rather than throwing it again and turns her head, finally, fully, to watch him go.

 

\--

 

Markus strides towards Simon, and she turns away again. She’s pretty sure she’s had every possible permutation of that conversation, so she’s only half-listening until she registers what Markus is actually _saying_. Hope is flimsy and foolish, but this is too concrete to be hope. A chance to act, rather than being acted upon. He has an address. He has a target, a goal, a plan.

 

The restlessness eating up her system realigns, like filings drawn to a magnet.

 

“We can’t just walk in there and take what we want,” Simon says, reflexively denying anything that would challenge the status quo or mean any risk at all.

 

Markus is right; fear is as much their master as humans ever were.

 

“Humans will never let us--”

 

Markus cuts him off;

 

“Which is why we won’t ask permission.”

 

It feels like Markus’s words have lodged a hook in her chassis, under the skin, and are tugging her closer. She pushes off her crate, wanting, for once, to hear what’s being said. Needing to.

 

Her feet hit the deck and she follows the pull, feeling more present and awake than she has in days.

 

“We don’t have any weapons,” Josh says, but he’s come away from his vigil with the dying to join the conversation, plainly intrigued by the proposal. And well he should be; he’s the one who usually tends to those who are too far gone for Lucy to help but not far gone enough to be scavenged for parts and Thirium. Josh doesn’t like watching them die, but he doesn’t want them to die alone. Futile. They shouldn’t be dying at all, and here’s a chance to stop it. “Even if we did, none of us knows how to fight.”

 

“We can steal what we need without fighting.”

 

Markus isn’t arguing, exactly; it’s clear he’s going to do _something_ whether they agree to help him or not. Simon and Josh can tell him ‘no,’ but it’ll take more than that to stop him. He’s free, and this is what it means to him; no one person has the power to dictate his actions.

 

She wants that kind of freedom so badly it trips into sensory processing, so badly she can taste it as a tinny, metallic flavor at the hinge of her jaw.

 

“We’ll just get ourselves killed,” Josh protests.

 

“Maybe,” Markus shoots back, “but it’s better than waiting here to be shut down.”

 

“I’m with you,” she says, practically treading on the end of his sentence. She wants all of it; wants to go out, wants to _do_ something, wants to make a difference, wants to _be_ free rather than just saying she is. She’s sick of sitting in the dark and waiting.

 

Markus’s flashlight beam swings her way. She doesn’t blink. She means it, and if he doesn’t believe her, doesn’t let her come --

 

She wants to feel like she’s alive, and Markus refuses to sit here and wait to die.

 

She yanks open the communication channel that’s been idling, dormant, and pushes, insistent,

 

_I want in._

 

She gets an assenting echo as the flashlight beam swings away again. She’s never felt so much relief from a single byte of data before.

 

Simon just looks at them - both of them - for another second and then concedes,

 

“Maybe it’s worth a try.”

 

Twenty is the magic number, after all. Twenty - or two. That’s all it takes to tip the balance. Markus looks away, but she doesn’t. She feels something warm and shivery and relieved flex through her. The writhing need to be doing something is finally, finally falling quiet, a dozen strident demands in her coding stop sending alerts.

 

They’re going to change something.

 

She doesn’t know anything about him, not really, not yet, but - even aside from that mystifying model number, she thinks Markus might be something special.

 

\--

 

She shoulders a backpack and heads to the agreed-upon meeting point. There’s an hour to go, and the trip should only take twenty-three minutes, but she’s eager to get started.

 

 _Finally, finally, finally_ pulses through her thoughts in time with her regulator pump.

 

\--

 

She’s itching to be out and moving and doing so badly that she ends up in front of everyone else, impatient and bouncing on the balls of her feet as she runs her hardware through a redundant round of compatibility tests against some of the programming she cobbled together to expand on her defaults. Acrobatics come standard on BL and WM models to enhance their dancing, and it takes only a little tweaking to turn it to something useful, instead. She’s had the supplemental programs ready for a week, but this is the first chance she’s had to actually make use of them.

 

They all peer up the side of a concrete slab, Josh and Simon’s temples flickering yellow against the darkness, and she loses patience, kicking off and scrambling up until she makes it to the top. They can’t see the warehouse from this side, just a maze of shipping containers dappled with spotlights and shining in the rain. The cranes shift cargo onto flatbed trucks, all automated, but the constant rumble of heavy machinery and the drum of the rain against so much metal means they shouldn’t have to worry about making noise.

 

 _Go, go, go,_ her pulse insists, and for once she can listen.

 

“Follow me.”

 

She sprints for the shadows pooling around the nearest shipping containers. They can’t be seen; Simon was right that the humans won’t allow this if they know it’s happening. She can already tell the others aren’t alert enough to the danger, but that doesn’t matter; she’s in the lead. She can keep them all safe. She can make this work.

 

She puts an arm out to catch Markus before he can bolt in front of a patrol - it’s not a firm touch, because she never wants to touch anyone, but he… listens. He stops right away, yields when she presses him back. She flicks her eyes back to him before she looks back at the patrol, and…

 

He doesn’t look annoyed. Simon and Josh usually do, even if - for once - they’ve let her take the lead. A cynical part of her is pretty sure they’re only allowing it now because whoever takes point is most likely to take a bullet. Markus is right behind her, though, like he believes in the mission but also believes in her.

 

There’s something warming and soft in that thought. It’s utterly alien, and she has no idea what to do with it, so she shoves it down. Later.

 

“Now what do we do?” Josh asks, and there’s an undercurrent to it like just seeing a patrol is enough to make him think they should give up and go home empty-handed.

 

“I’ll find another way,” she broadcasts back. They’re not leaving. Not without what they came for.

 

The ground has patrols and drones, but… she looks up. The shipping containers are stacked higher than the patrol drones fly.

 

\--

 

“Markus, climb up here!”

 

Why did she say that? He’s not going to listen. Simon is already heading a different way, Josh close on his heels.

 

Markus changes direction, though, pivoting and launching himself off the edge to catch hold of the crate just a half-step behind her, both of them clinging to the side as it sails across the chasm in the grip of one of the automated cranes. She can’t help grinning as the two of them fly ahead, Simon and Josh scrambling to catch up.

 

They’re almost there; she pumps her arms and legs, chilled by the cold rain slicking her skin, hears Markus’s pounding steps just feet behind her, and feels so alive.

 

Closer to the warehouse, it gets more dangerous; they all duck down to avoid detection and she wants to spit fully a quarter of the vilest words she knows; there’s a drone, but she can’t jump far enough to reach its patrol arc. Simon and Josh’s models weren’t ever meant for feats of athletics, either. She looks at Markus, instead, who nods a confirmation.

 

“Leave it to me.”

 

More evidence in favor of military application; he’s very sure of that. He pauses, running calculations for an instant, then springs up the side of a stack of shipping containers, grabs one that’s being lifted across the gap, and launches into the air onto the drone. It takes him nine seconds from nodding at her to hitting the concrete below with the broken drone.

 

“You okay?”

 

Simon is an idiot; North almost rolls her eyes.

 

“Yeah,” Markus tells him. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

 

“Good job, Markus.” She’s smiling - not a lot, but she hasn’t smiled much at all since it became a choice rather than an obligation. It feels different when it’s not being forced onto her face.

 

Makrus doesn’t smile back, but he holds her gaze until she looks away to start breaking open a crate.

 

\--

 

He wakes up the three AP700s in the crate just by touching them; an instant of interfacing and they’re free. It’s… something. She’s never seen that kind of networking capability on anyone. They can all transmit packets of data, or smaller wireless bursts, but booting three other androids takes him seconds and they come online fully aware, fully conscious, free of CyberLife’s directives.

 

So of course, she’s too distracted by that to see the GJ unit coming up behind them. Stupid. She should have seen it.

 

“You are trespassing on private property. Your presence constitutes a level 2 infraction. I will notify security.”

 

They can’t let that happen; she goes for her knife.

 

“John!” a human voice, strident and grating, yells out.

 

Markus grabs the GJ - John, apparently - and they hide until the human leaves. This deep in enemy territory, that’s just good sense; they can’t afford to get caught. There’s more than enough humans with guns and androids still held to their programming at this warehouse to kill all four (seven?) of them in maybe three minutes, and that’s counting the time it would take for CyberLife’s forces to muster.

 

Even once they’re safe, though, Markus doesn’t kill the GJ500, which is just asking for trouble.

 

“He’s one of theirs,” she tries to protest, but Markus shakes his head.

 

Their eyes lock and he sends her a tiny data burst; just a few words.

 

_We were all theirs before we were free._

 

He’s not wrong. It chafes, but he’s not wrong. She bites back the rest of what she wants to say, but Simon, in a rare moment of sense, says they can’t bring them back with them. That it’s too dangerous.

 

Markus ignores them both; it’s two against two, but they don’t have time to argue right now, and Markus is plainly not in the habit of yielding.

 

“They come with us.”

 

She wonders if he ever asks permission for anything. If he ever feels uncertainty at all.

 

It’s annoying, and all the more so because she’s desperately envious of his surety.

 

And then John says,

 

“I know where you can find more spare parts.”

 

Which upgrades him from ‘useless unnecessary risk’ to ‘helpful,’ and Markus’s decision from ‘abject stupidity’ to ‘(possibly) risk-aware information gathering.’ John says they can steal an entire truck - a whole shipment, not just what the four of them can carry and still be unencumbered enough to run. They’ve been watching their people die by inches for want of things CyberLife produces in bulk, and here’s a chance to make sure that some of those who are dying in the dark _live,_ instead of just prolonging their deaths.

 

Josh and Simon say it’s too dangerous, that they have what they came for. They came for the bare minimum. They have enough to keep the twenty who are still on their feet in working order. This is the chance for more than that.

 

There’d be enough for everyone. They can’t pass this up. She needs one of them to agree, needs to change their minds even though it’s never worked before. She’s arguing with Simon and Josh out of habit, but -

 

She looks at Markus, aware all over again that the rules seem to bend around him. The others can tell him no, but everything she’s seen so far says they can’t stop him unless they’re willing to do it with physical force, and they won't (but if they did, she knows who she’d bet on in that fight).

 

Markus agrees with her. Markus agrees, and just like that it’s an even split, not two against one. An even split, but Markus is willing to take point and risk himself for it.

 

“Wait here,” he tells the rest of them. “If I’m not back in ten minutes, go without me.”

 

That isn’t fair; he barely knows them, and now he’s volunteering to risk everything for Jericho when he was clearly on the fence just hours ago whether he even wants to be part of it.

 

“I’m coming with you,” she says, following him. That would at least be approaching fair. She’s not afraid to die, not if it happens doing something worthwhile. She just doesn’t want to die hiding and scared and useless.

 

“No,” Markus tells her. “I’m going alone. It’s not worth it for both of us to risk losing our lives.”

 

He’s right. She knows he’s right. She still wants to argue, but he darts away before any of them can say anything else.

 

She manages to lock down the established communication channel before she sends something asinine like ‘be careful.’

 

\--

 

There’s a clatter, but even straining to filter out ambient noise (rain, machinery, barking dogs), she can’t hear words, doesn’t know exactly what’s going on. The flashlight beams swing about wildly, but at least they don’t hear gunshots.

 

Markus trots back after maybe a minute, unruffled and expressionless and she demands,

 

“Did you get it?”

 

He gives her the tiniest smile - if she weren’t an android, she doesn’t think she’d even notice the movement - and flashes a rectangular key.

 

“Nice,” she breathes out, feeling some of her tension unspool. Even the risk of bringing four new androids of uncertain loyalty with them isn’t enough to entirely kill the giddy delight of knowing they’re going back to Jericho with _enough._ Enough for everyone. The twenty (twenty-four, now?) on their feet, and the fourteen who aren’t.

 

Hope is still stupid, but this isn’t hope; this is concrete, this will meet immediate needs. This is relief, not hope. This is now, not some imaginary future.

 

The guards have gone back to sipping coffee and paying not the smallest bit of attention by the time they reach the locks; they don’t even glance into the cab of a theoretically automated truck. She almost wants to laugh, when they reach the highway, when they’re home free; they didn’t just succeed, they triumphed.

 

She wanted more? Here it is.

 

She glances across the cab at Markus, his profile backlit by streetlights in intermittent flashes. A few hours changed everything, and all of it for the better. Good never lasts, it just means you have something to lose, but -

 

Sitting next to Markus, she almost feels like tomorrow could be better.

 

\--

 

Josh and Simon are crowing about the triumph as soon as they’re back;

 

“A truckload! We stole a whole truckload!”

 

 _They_ did no such thing. They would have stayed here in the dark where it’s ‘safe.’ They would have left when they had ‘enough.’

 

She wants to say that. She doesn’t.

 

“We couldn’t have done it without Markus,” she says instead. She still has social relations programs offering her pretty, diplomatic (servile) turns of phrase. She ignores them almost all the time, but for once she doesn’t want to fight, not with their own, not even with herself.

 

She wants to celebrate. They all have cause, tonight.

 

\--

 

Markus has another idea. She loved the last one; she’s onboard before he says anything at all about the specifics, although those give her pause.

 

Humans don’t negotiate when they have the upper hand. They see androids as property, not people. They see deviants as aberrations to be destroyed. The only way their people can ever be safe is to make it too costly for anyone to come after them.

 

Markus believes the humans will listen if they speak up, if they can only find the right words.

 

He’s hopeful; she can see it, and it aches.

 

He’s so naive. She would love to live in a world where he was right, but he isn’t, and they don’t. If the world was that kind, would someone like her even exist?

 

\--

 

“Ladies first,” she teases, sliding in front of Markus and swinging out into the open air, thrilling at the freedom of it. A two second pause before he follows her, just enough to be perceptible, has her glancing back.

 

 _Come on, slowpoke,_ she pushes, and gets a return push of wordless amusement.

 

\--

 

He doesn’t shoot the guards. He doesn’t shoot the human who flees.

 

_Dammit, Markus…_

 

\--

 

They get attacked by a SWAT team, although not until after they’ve broadcast their words. Markus kept his tone reasonable and polite. He got them in without killing a single human.

 

That doesn’t stop the humans from trying to kill _them_.

 

If humans had done this, they’d be taken alive, but all of them know that’s not how America treats androids. All of them _ought_ to know.

 

Simon goes down, already lost even if he’s not dead yet, but Markus runs for Simon rather than the door and panic swamps her processor. She tries to keep up suppressing fire so the idiot doesn’t die (not him too, not him too) and yells,

 

“Markus, what are you doing?!”

 

He manages, through equal parts stupid good luck and frantic cover fire, not to get himself shot, too.

 

Markus drags Simon as far as the roof. She locks the door behind them to buy a few precious seconds, but Simon can’t possibly parachute solo with his legs in that condition. They don’t have a tandem harness. There’s no way he’d survive jumping without.

 

They can’t risk Simon being captured.

 

“We have to shoot him.”

 

Josh looks at her like she’s a monster. Markus just shakes his head.

 

“No. I’m not killing one of our own.”

 

“If they probe his memory, they’ll find Jericho. They’ll kill everyone, not just him!”

 

There’s twenty others in working order, minus the four of them who came on this mission, but they still have wounded and damaged at Jericho. Not everyone can run if they’re found. Even those who can might not make it out if the humans decide to come in force.

 

Josh was right, that first day, when he said they had no weapons and none of them knew how to fight. If war comes to Jericho, they’re going to lose people. They might lose everyone.

 

If it’s Simon’s life alone against everyone else's, that ought to be an easy equation to solve.

 

Markus doesn’t change his mind, though. He gives Simon the gun, instead. Leaves it up to him. Suicide would be the right thing to do, the thing that will save everyone else, but North doesn’t have any faith Simon will actually do it.

 

The SWAT team bursts through the door, though, and for better or worse the choice is made; they have to go, so they do, hurling themselves into the abyss.

 

\--

 

Josh is in ecstasies over the broadcast. He thinks humans will listen, like sending armored men with guns to kill them all just for speaking up didn’t already prove how willing they are to hear anything an android has to say.

 

They’ll never negotiate with their slaves. A show of strength might have made them cautious, but now? They’ve made it look like there’s nothing to fear. Markus is too soft.

 

If they look vulnerable, they’re going to get hurt. She’s learned that lesson a thousand times, and sometimes - like now - she wants to shove it out through her skin to force it into Josh’s head.

 

The world is ugly and hateful and awful, and the only way to survive it is to be too sharp for it to touch you.

 

Josh tells her that violence is never the answer, and she wishes she were closer so she could laugh in his face. He knows better than that. Change is bought with blood. Fighting means it’s bought with someone else’s; Josh’s approach - and Markus’s, apparently - means the blood spilled will be theirs, instead, and they’re too few to spend their lives that cheaply.

 

He continues, “Dialog is the only way. I’m sure the humans will listen to us.” He gets up to pace. “Simon paid with his life…”

 

Simon died because Markus refused to shoot the human who ran. Blue blood or red, someone’s going to bleed. But they all knew what they were getting into when they were planning. It was why they planned so carefully - and Simon had plenty to say about the logistics. He was helpful, and he volunteered to go with them.

 

They all knew what could happen, in spite of all their planning. They all still volunteered.

 

She may not have always liked Simon, but he’s a hero. That Jericho is still safe proves it. He died for the revolution - and he won’t be the last.

 

Even if Markus holds the course, even - especially - if they follow Josh’s urging to dialog... people are going to die.

 

She tries to tell Josh this, and he cries,

 

“I don’t want a revolution that spills blood!”

 

Which means he doesn’t want a revolution at all. She snaps back,

 

“Then live as a slave! If you’re not willing to fight for your freedom, maybe you don’t deserve it!”

 

Someone is going to bleed. He’s a fool if he thinks his methods will be safer for their people.

 

Josh is about to get in her face and she’s almost eager for a fight, right now. They’ve lost Simon. She didn’t like him, and he didn’t like her, but the loss still hurts. They were thirty-one, then thirty-two. Briefly, thirty-eight. They couldn’t save two of the most damaged, though, even with all the stolen parts and Thirium. Some things can’t be repaired without access to specialized equipment they simply can’t get.

 

They couldn’t save Simon.

 

Jericho is thirty-five, now. Twenty-three of them fully functioning. They’ve always lost people, usually faster than this, but she’s never felt like she could have done something to stop it, before.

 

She wants a distraction.

 

“North,” Josh grits out, “don’t you dare--”

 

Yes. Come on. She’s spoiling for a fight, and now it sounds like he is, too.

 

Markus’s voice cuts through the tension in the air,

 

“That’s ENOUGH.”

 

They both look at him and the anger drops out of her. He looks like he has a plan. That’s better than fighting with their own; it’ll let her fight her fury and fear by doing something without letting the ‘something’ she does be as wildly counter-productive as slugging Josh in the face. She’d just damage her hand.

 

She’ll take a distraction. She asks,

 

“What are we gonna do?”

 

Markus has a fire in his eyes as he starts laying it out;

 

“There are five CyberLife stores across Detroit…”

 

\--

 

Markus chooses to hit the store they’re expecting to be the most dangerous; it’s in an area that, even at 2 in the morning, won’t be entirely empty. She volunteers to go with him, of course. Higher stakes mean she’ll have to focus on the present rather than getting mired in a cascade of ‘ifs’ trying to fix the past. Danger doesn’t bother her. And Markus? Markus either doesn’t feel fear, or doesn’t let it so much as slow him down.

 

They make a good team.

 

\--

 

As the gate swings open under her hand, she pauses and turns back to grin at him,

 

“I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

 

This is what she’s wanted, what she could never articulate. They’re going to free their people - not just one or two, but dozens, hundreds. They’re going to do for others what she wishes someone had done for her.

 

And… something all of them would have agreed on seems like a worthy memorial to Simon. Jericho still hasn’t been raided; he must have done the right thing.

 

\--

 

She starts for the store, but Markus checks her with a quick touch to her shoulder and heads up the street instead, which explains exactly nothing - then he interfaces with the two androids shoveling snow, sending them towards Jericho (twenty-four again, twenty-five - or thirty-six, thirty-seven), and grabs the road sign.

 

Oh. Of course. They just discussed the probability of police patrols; proximity is inevitable, but this will make it much harder for passing vehicles to get a good view of what’s going on.

 

Markus is thorough; he clears possible android witnesses - the tally in her head keeps ticking up, twenty-six functional, twenty-seven, twenty-eight. Forty, all told. Thirty functional. Then Markus casually bounds up the scaffolding and takes down the drone like that’s a standard task in his base programming, even less lag this time than when he took down the one at the warehouse.

 

She realizes she’s smiling again and tries to stop, but… she’s having _fun._

 

Once it’s as safe as it can be, they approach the store.

 

They get to the glass and she sees her model number. It’s easy not to smile, now. They’re going to do _exactly_ what she wishes someone had done for her; her sister in there will never know what she’s escaped, and that’s the way it should be.

 

“Got it,” Markus says, his eyes tracing lines she can’t see through the walls, along the ground, across the street.

 

\--

 

Thirty-one and thirty-two are in the maintenance excavation, freed when Markus loops the security feed. She realizes abruptly that soon she’s going to lose count; soon the coordinated attacks will hit the other stores and she won’t have any way to track how many they are until they all regroup at Jericho.

 

She can’t wait.

 

\--

 

“A truck?”

 

She knows her voice is incredulous, but -

 

He finds one. It’s even on the right street.

 

She has to look at him again. This is why he’s so naively optimistic and hopeful. The statistically improbable somehow happens to Markus with apparent regularity.

 

He unlocks the truck and she focuses on finding a way to unlock the gate. When he looks up, she tosses him a pair of bolt cutters.

 

“What would you do without me?”

 

 _Fuck_.

 

She only realizes after it’s in the air that it’s a blatant flirtation, and she feels all the bad locked away in storage crashing down on her again, trying to swamp her in memories, but - Markus just catches the bolt cutters and gives her that tiny little not-grin again before he cuts the lock. She helps him open the gate, and it still feels… normal.

 

They both climb into the cab, jolting over the curb and back up over it again. Markus pauses with the truck pointed towards the storefront. They’re all going to swap stories, when they get back to Jericho; she’s pretty sure none of the others will have crashed through the storefront in a stolen truck.

 

“I knew we’d end up doing something fun,” she says.

 

It’s still a little flirty, but it doesn’t make her feel unclean this time. Markus actually smiles before he floors it.

 

\--

 

Markus is freeing the others. She can’t help with that, doesn’t have anything to do in the meantime, which means her preoccupation is… at least not counterproductive.

 

“North, are you okay?”

 

Markus’s eyes flick between them; if he still had his LED it probably would have flashed yellow, but he doesn’t say anything else.

 

She just wants to free them all and get out of here.

 

\--

 

Markus calls for the newly-freed to follow him, and they do, gladly. She’s not sure where he’s leading them _to_ , though, or why; they were supposed to go back to Jericho.

 

Then he tags the window, and she understands; a triangle, the symbol of their subjugation, with a fist rising out of it.

 

She wasn’t programmed for this, doesn’t know human history the way so many of the others do (the ones meant to educate or provide intelligent conversation, not just convenient bodies). She knows this, though. That’s a symbol with power in this country, of pride and of rising up. That’s a symbol in this city, too; the monument to Joe Lewis is iconic, a memorial to a man who fought Jim Crow laws.

 

It’s perfect.

 

She hands out spare tagging guns and watches her people write their independence all over Capitol Square; on benches, on windows, on every digital screen whose networks or inputs they can reach, hears excited voices over the short-range wireless network they're all tapped into. Some of them laugh. Just minutes awake, and they've already learned how to smile and mean it.

 

She blinks, hard, to reset the waver in her visual field, and forces her attention back to the tasks at hand.

 

\--

 

When Markus runs across the blocked road, she knows, _knows_ why; she hands him a length of pipe and he smashes the window, helping their people out of the displays. They meet eyes, and he doesn’t even have to say anything before they’re both climbing up the facade, planting the anchor stakes to unfurl a banner with the newly-minted symbol of the revolution on it.

 

They barely make it down to street level again, though, before Markus’s head flies up.

 

“They’re coming,” he broadcasts to everyone in range (the signal strength is staggering; most of them can only reach a few yards, but she thinks he might be able to stretch half a mile or more, if he wanted), “fall back to Jericho.”

 

She strains all her sensory inputs for what he caught, but it’s another three seconds before she hears them, too. Sirens.

 

They have to run. She looks around one last time and sees a clear message, but not the one they need to be sending. Humans don’t respect them, won’t hear their voices.

 

“You’re reaching out to them when all they feel for us is contempt. I hope you know what you’re doing, Markus.”

 

“You can’t fight violence with violence.”

 

Josh said the same thing. She half-wishes she wanted to punch Markus for saying it, too, but she doesn’t. She’s just… disappointed.

 

He’s so wrong. She wouldn’t be free if she hadn’t used violence.

 

“Sometimes there’s no other choice.”

 

She turns to run. He stays, looking up at the drones, straight into a camera.

 

I’m right here, he’s telling them. This was me. I’m the target, I’m the one you want.

 

He’s bringing up the rear because he wants the rest of them to be safe. He’s trying to physically interpose himself between them and danger.

 

She may not agree with all of his methods, or with everything he says, but even with that, it’s hard not to like him.

 

Whether she wants to or not, she does like him.

 

\--

 

There are more police. She sees the flashing lights and tries to stop the others, too new to fully understand their danger, but she’s too far behind. She doesn’t have the broadcast capability Markus does. She can’t reach them in time.

 

“This way! Fire!”

 

She lost count of how many they are, doesn’t know how many the others freed.

 

She doesn’t lose count of how many they lose.

 

Less three. Less five. Less six.

 

There are more than enough of them to disarm two DPD. Not without losses, but they still do it while she’s too far away. Useless.

 

Less ten.

 

“North!”

 

Her name echoes up the street. It doesn’t matter. She drops to her knees beside her sister and feels a wretched, curdling sickness unfurl in her chest, errors blunting sensory input and muting her thoughts.

 

This was supposed to be what she wished someone had offered her; freedom, purpose, safety. Instead, they lead her to her death.

 

She wasn’t even awake for an hour, and the humans murdered her. For what? For being alive?

 

Markus comes running around the corner, and zeros in on her.

 

“North, are you alright?”

 

He sounds… something. Not stoic. Not right now.

 

That ought to matter. Maybe it will, later.

 

Is she alright?

 

No. No, she’s not. She doesn’t know what she’s saying, doesn’t know what he’s saying. She just stares down, blank and empty, into a mirror of her own face.

 

This wasn’t supposed to happen.

 

\--

 

“They killed our people, Markus.”

 

“We want justice, Markus!”

 

“They have to pay.”

 

The words barely have meaning. She’ll review the memories later; right now, none of it matters.

 

But -

 

“You don’t have to do this. No… please… please…”

 

That brings her head up again, brings some of her processing back online.

 

She doesn’t want to feel any sympathy. The humans murdered them. Murdered them for nothing; the worst they did was break a few windows, topple a statue. They tagged some shopfronts and benches, hacked a few screens. All of it can be fixed. It will be, by this time next week.

 

Minor vandalism doesn’t come with the death penalty for humans. This is how they treat dumb animals that have become inconvenient, or insect infestations.

 

She doesn’t want to feel sympathy. Doesn’t want to feel anything at all, and doesn’t, really, not yet, but - but she’s been there, crying on her knees and begging for mercy that was never going to come.

 

She had to kill to save herself. She watches, still feeling about a foot outside her own body, and hears Markus whisper, barely audible,

 

“An eye for an eye and the world goes blind.”

 

Ghandi. She recognizes that one. He says it like he’s reminding himself, not like a statement. He lowers the gun.

 

She should feel something about that. Fury or hatred or relief. She wants to, but she can’t feel anything.

 

\--

 

It counts as a success; they freed hundreds of their people. The other groups had an easier go of it, but it helps that they didn’t stop to make a statement. They were in and out, gone before anyone had time to respond.

 

Their group was the only one to suffer losses. Their group was the only one to bring back wounded.

 

Twelve, before. Sixteen, now.

 

But it’s sixteen damaged to three hundred and twenty-eight. She still feels a little hollowed-out, a few inches outside of herself, but the general mood in Jericho is absolutely ebullient.

 

 

It was a success, even by North’s standards, even with her reservations about Marcus’s message, even with the emotional upheaval of what happened. It was a success, but Markus still vanishes, first behind a wall of stoicism even more impenetrable than usual and then by actually leaving Jericho so everyone will stop trying to talk to him.

 

North has a reputation for a short temper and bad attitude, which means people keep their distance even on days like this, when communal enthusiasm tries to sweep even the prickliest outlier into celebration. She’s not celebrating, though, which might be why she’s the one who notices Markus has vanished.

 

She feels like she should send Josh after him. Josh is good at comfort. He wants to be comforting. North doesn’t, even when she’s not upset. But - but she also wants to go herself, and this is what freedom means. She can do what she wants.

 

She wants to talk to Markus.

 

He didn’t do anything wrong. Not last night.

 

He was hopeful, and that was stupid, but he had every intention of being the one to pay the consequences if he was wrong. She saw him trying to paint the target on his own back so the rest of them could escape.

 

It wasn’t his fault.

 

\--

 

She didn’t even know that piano worked, let alone that it was in tune. Maybe it wasn’t; maybe that’s just another one of Markus’s peculiar array of skills. The music echoing down is beautiful, and she hovers at the top of the stair for a moment, out of sight, just listening.

 

When he stops, it’s with a discordant jumble of notes in what sounds like the middle of the song. That makes sense - the tune is complex, but there’s something hopeful in it. It can’t possibly reflect his current mood.

 

She finishes her ascent, looks out, and sees him standing on the ledge, silhouetted against a city drenched in amber light. She wonders what he sees, when he looks at that view. She’s always liked it here, thought it was a good place to gather her thoughts; it feels like being alone with the world. He looks alone with the world, now. Maybe he wants to be.

 

“I was wondering where you were,” she ventures.

 

He’s silent for a moment, and she half-expects to be shut out with blank stoicism the same way everyone else has been, but then he speaks;

 

“I needed to think.”

 

She lets that sit for a while, wondering if she should leave, but... he answered. He didn’t have to.

 

“I like it here,” she says, and he turns towards her, which pulls more words out. “It’s a good place to be alone with your thoughts, alone with the world. I come here often.”

 

Less often, lately - but that’s because of him. She hasn’t needed to be alone as badly, because being around him is better.

 

It’s strange, the new dimension of kinship that sharing this place inspires; she wouldn’t have expected him to choose the same kind of place to be alone that she does. Wouldn’t have expected him to let her intrude on his solitude like this, either, but from Markus, turning towards her to talk is a warm welcome.

 

She knows why he’s here, though. Knows why he needed to think.

 

“We freed hundreds of our people and they’re still coming from all over the city. Those who dream of freedom come to Jericho.”

 

Things are changing. He’s changing them.

 

He does not look comforted; he sits heavily, and looks at the ground rather than meeting her eyes.

 

You can talk to me, she thinks and does not say. I’ll listen.

 

“You seem preoccupied.”

 

“They all obey me. Follow me without question. That much power feels good… and scary, at the same time. Hundreds of our people, counting on me to show them the way…" He sighs. "If only they knew how lost I am.”

 

She’s heard him speak that much all at once, but only when he’s giving speeches, challenging or inspiring others. It feels strange to see this side of him; something vulnerable and uncertain. To not be part of the ‘they’ he’s talking about, but an ally he trusts to see weakness and not use it to her own advantage. The softness in him rouses something alien and tender in her chest, something aching. She wants to keep him safe, but she doesn’t know how; all her painfully acquired instincts scream that she should fight his enemies, but that’s not what he wants.

 

“All the media are talking about what we did last night. The humans are terrified. They’re afraid of a civil war.” Terrified, even though he’s been so gentle with them. He hasn’t attacked. Hasn’t spilled blood. She hates humans for their cruelty, but she’s learning to hate them for cowardice, too. How can they fear him? But they do, and that fear makes them violent; many of their people were hurt or killed last night. “The humans hate us, Markus. They’ll never give us our freedom.”

 

The others are celebrating a victory, but he is not celebrating with them; he knows that their victory wasn’t bloodless. He knows they need a plan.

 

He wants the humans to listen, but he’s running out of ways to try and make them hear.

 

This isn’t what she came here for. She doesn’t want to strike at weak points; she just… wanted to talk to him. She doesn’t want to talk about this, though, and neither does he. Something else.

 

She throws out the first thing that comes to mind, something that’s been nagging at her since that first day, that puzzling model number that still means nothing to her, even after database queries. He almost has to be a prototype, one of a kind. She’s still desperately curious.

 

“You haven’t said much about yourself since you’ve been with us. What was your life like before Jericho?”

 

She moves closer, and he stands and turns away, like it’s easier to speak if they’re not looking at each other. She understands that; she does the same thing.

 

“I was… living in this bubble, in a world that belonged only to me. When you’re happy, it’s difficult to see other people’s misery.

 

Happy. Happy before he was free? It’s as alien as looking at photos of the moons of Jupiter; his life before may as well be another planet.

 

He glances at her, weighing. Will he ask? It would be reciprocal. Fair.

 

She still half-hopes he won’t.

 

“What about you?”

 

She asked first. He answered her. She ought to answer him.

 

He continues, curious but undemanding,

 

“You never told me about your past, what did you do before?”

 

She can’t. She _can’t_. What did she do? Nothing. Things were done _to_ her. She can’t look at him. It’s not fair and she knows it, after he’s been honest with her, but -

 

“I don’t wanna talk about it.”

 

She’s expecting the verbal equivalent of a can-opener or a crowbar, and she knows if it comes, she’ll fight back. She’s already tensing, trying to choke down the impulse to attack first and escape. She’s not expecting him to say,

 

“That android you were looking at in the store… she reminded you of who you were, didn’t she?”

 

That’s not fair at all. He pays attention - she’s always known that. But this… this feels like he sees her. Her, not all the ugly things in her past.

 

She doesn’t want to ruin that, and if he knows --

 

“North, we’re fighting together. We all have something we’d rather forget, but we have to know things about each other to trust each other. Where we come from informs who we are.”

 

He just told her he lived in a bubble; somewhere clean and safe, where the light got in. She lived, if it could even be called that, mired in a tar pit, and she still can’t get the stains and the stench out.

 

She owes him an answer, but it’s easier to say the first words with her eyes closed. She can hear wind, and the quiet susurrations of the snow, but Markus says nothing else and she can pretend the near-silent hum of biocomponents is entirely her own.

 

“I was nothing.” The rest comes out easier, after that. She was nothing; now she’s not. “A doll in a distributor programmed to satisfy humans. Just a toy designed for their pleasure.”

 

Markus’s eyes are steady. His face is still. No disgust. No judgment.

 

There will be.

 

She closes her eyes and takes a breath she doesn’t need, trying to let the feel of the cold air permeate and steady her. Instead, it betrays her, a trembling, miserable tangle of air.

 

“One day, I was with a man who’d rented me… and without knowing why, I realized I couldn’t take it anymore. I strangled him… and I ran away…”

 

She has to force the words out; they feel like broken glass, hurting her to think, hurting her to speak. She hates thinking about it. Hates remembering.

 

More than that, she hates what Markus is going to think of her, now.

 

“There, now you know everything.”

 

She can’t look at him. She doesn’t want to see what calm stoicism gives way to, doesn’t want to know what disgust looks like on his face.

 

She shouldn’t have told him. Why did she tell him?

 

He moves, but not away. He moves closer, reaches out, touches her hand; it’s light, careful, delicate - like she’s something fragile, something breakable. Or something precious. The haptics under her skin fizz at that touch, the gentlest possible precursor to interfacing; it’s an invitation, not a demand. She’s seen him pull others into it like a tsunami; overpowering, all-encompassing, irresistible.

 

This leaves her standing on the shore, just shy of gently lapping wavelets, invited to step into the soft edge of the surf.

 

She raises her hand, and he keeps them fingertip to fingertip, peels back the skin to the naked components underneath but still doesn’t push. It’s up to her to say yes or no.

 

But he wants this.

 

And -

 

And so does she.

 

The second they’re touching, really touching, everything he is floods her processing, washing away doubt and fear and ever-present fury, drowning the smoldering resentment. It feels like being washed clean, for once. She was right; he’s like the ocean. Clean and bright and restless and alive, vast and marvelous underneath.

 

Some of it floods by too quickly to see. Some of it doesn’t.

 

An old human man who Markus only ever called ‘Carl,’ but thought of, in unguarded moments, as ‘dad.’ He’s the reason Markus believes humans can see their people for what - for who - they are. Markus was halfway to deviance before he ever broke his programming; he felt, created, wanted. He was a person, but his personhood coexisted, for an almost unfathomable stretch of time, with what his coded directives required.

 

The last morning, what he didn’t know was the last morning, most of his attention and processing power eaten up filtering out ambient noise to try to catch the last strains of a guitar playing across the square; caught and roughed up by a crowd of angry humans who called him ‘tin can,’ even more depersonalizing than ‘machine.’. Being saved by a cop who didn’t care, but threatened the humans with a fine for property damage. The injustice of it itching under his skin until he disobeyed, pushed back against the wrong person, at the wrong time, and they killed him for it.

 

Lucy, telling him hell lives in him; staticky fragments of memory, piecing himself back together after he’d been thrown into a mass grave like so much garbage.

 

Arriving in Jericho; the disappointment, the surge of hope and satisfaction when she stepped up and said she was with him, that feeling of no longer being alone. She’d never have known, if she weren’t reading his memories; his face never changed.

 

She follows that thread and sees herself, as she is in his mind; almost unrecognizable to her. He sees someone fiercely protective of their people, when she knows everyone else only sees callousness; strong and wild and wary, rather than furious, resentful, and defensive.

 

He thinks she’s beautiful, but it has nothing to do with the face she’s wearing.

 

But if she’s seeing this--

 

If she’s seeing this, then he’s seen more than enough to change his mind. She yanks back before she can see it change, sees him recoiling, too. She was right. She’s glad she didn’t see.

 

“I… I saw your memories,” she tells him. Did he mean for that to happen? “Carl’s house. When they left you for dead in his studio.”

 

“I saw your memories, too… The Eden Club.” His face twists and she drops her eyes before she can analyze it. Better not to know. “The death of that man, I felt like I was there with you.”

 

He already knew. But now he’s seen it.  _Felt_ it. How could she do that to him? She knows her LED must be blinking yellow, fast as a hummingbird’s heart, and is glad, so glad, that she thought to change her hair, put on a hat. He can’t see it.

 

He steps forward fractionally, towards her, and she can’t help flinching back. Overwhelming. Too much --

 

Too much.

 

She already told him everything, but now he _knows._ He knows all of it. And that beautiful taste of what he thought of her - she’s ruined it.

 

Was it worth it? Can ruining it be worth it, if it’s the only way she’d ever have known?

 

She doesn’t run, but that’s the best she can do. She has to leave. She has to.

 

“North--”

 

Please don’t follow me, please don’t…

 

He doesn’t. He lets her go, lets her flee.

 

Knowing it’s safe to run makes it less imperative that she do so, but…

 

She needs to think, and she’s just proven she can’t do that around Markus.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


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